number we got today. in his words unbelievable jobs numbers. these chicago guys will do anything, can't debate so change numbers. we'll see if mitt romney addresses that when he speaks in a few moments. have a good weekend. let's get to headquarters and "fast money" halftime. welcome to the "halftime report". four hours to go before the close. the dow jones average that's a four year high from the dow, higher by -- it's over here. higher by 56 points. i need my glasses. s&p 500, 1466, a begin of more than five points. remember that number because we'll talk about goldman sachs. nasdaq higher by five points, 3154. here's what we're following. bullish on 2013. goldman sachs slaps a 1575 target on the s&p for next year but sees stocks dropping 15%

this year. decline of more than 200 points in the s&p. what speed bumps are ahead important the rally. do you buy hp and sell facebook? one of the biggest loser of the week may be a better bet than a billion friends. we're trading the big movers today. we live dangerously here. first our lead story the jobs report. lots of conspiracy theorys flying around. unbelievable job numbers these chicago guys will do anything. can't debate so change the numbers. bottom line should you just believe it and buy? senior economics reporter steve liesman joins us. do we believe it? >> should you trade this number? here's a quick bottom line. the skbloorkjobs market is like

as strong. the big drop in unemployment. not as weak as the 114,000 jobs shown in the payroll. let me walk you through why you come to this conclusion. the payroll surveyed showed 114,000 jobs created. the work week increased a little bit, average hourly earnings were up and year-to-date, remember that figure of 1.31 million. write that down we'll come back to it. household survey, 873,000 jobs, but of that 582,000 were part time for economic reasons. that's not a flattering way to bet to the problem. it's like going in one of those, i don't know, an '84 pinto. that's not a nice way to get to the problem. there's a payroll adjusted concept. what we do is because they count jobs in different ways there's a thing called a payroll adjusted in this. what's the number? 1.34 million. what's number i asked you to

write down? 1.31 million. year-to-date not a whole lot of difference. bottom line is i think look what hp was writing. size of decline in unemployment is almost certainly exaggerated some improvement is consistent with the revised payroll data. we have modest growth and 1.5, 2.25 would be an upside but you have a highly supportive federal reserve and that will stay that way as long as 23 million americans are underemployed and overemployed. try to get rid of the political noise that's out there. it's the worst kind of static. it's 145, maybe 150,000 monthly job growth is the average that was out there. >> pretty weak at this point. >> exactly. we're not falling off a cliff. we revised up august and july so it was better than we thought it was which where do we put it? we put it right back at the average. i hate to come back here and tell you it's average.

>> we're going to cut you off because mitt romney is speak at a campaign convenient in virginia. >> wonderful couple that has a farm now they wonder whether they can keep the farm because the husband lost his job at the coal mine. these are tough times in this community. but you are strong and confident and patriotic people and we'll bring back jobs and bring back america. now somewhere congress and morgan griffith is here. where is he hanging out? hello congressman. thanks for being here. you got to make sure to re-elect this guy. he's one of the best. and by the way we have the governor here today but he's down in florida campaigning for me so thank you to bob mcdonnell for all the work he's doing. a great governor. and you may know that a couple of nights ago we had a debate. you may have gotten a chance to see that.

and it was a good experience, i think, for me, for the president, for people who watched. it was a debate of substance. we talked about the issues that america faces. i got the chance to ask the president some questions. i think people across the country have wanted to ask the president such as why it was that when america was needing jobs so badly he was pushing for obama care instead of working to get jobs to the american people. got the chance to ask him why there's still 23 million americans out of work or stopped looking for work, struggling to find good full time jobs? i got the chance to ask him why is the middle class so buried in this country. incomes have gone down. price of gasoline has doubled. price of food and clothing and almost everything else you buy has gone up. people in the middle class has been squeezed, buried as the vice president said. got the chance to talk about that. got a chance to ask him why he's

can you identifying medicare. that's not right to pay for obama care. and also got point to out that he's in favor of a tax plain that will kill 700,000 jobs. and so he had the chance to answer those questions, or not answer them as the case may be but then i think even more important was the chance to talk about where we're going in the future. what he would do and what i would do and what he described was in my view a reiteratation of the status quo. he'll keep doing what he's done in the past. he'll have a stimulus. hire more government workers. he's is going to pick winners and losers line solyndra. a friend of mine said no he doesn't like picking winners and lowers he just likes picking losers. and so, of course he's in favor of higher taxes. yesterday the vice president blurted out the truth. he said in fact they do want to raise taxes a trillion dollars. i don't want to raise tax on any

americans because i want to create good jobs in america. now, i take america in a very different direction. first of all i want to make sure that our policies encourage job growth and i have five things i'll do, you've heard me describe them time and again. but five things i'll do that will get jobs growing in this country again and growing right here in this part of virginia as well because number one on my list is to take full advantage of all our energy resources, our oil, coal, gas, our nuclear, our renewables. and i know you care a lot more about coal than the other ones i mention sod let me remind you that when the president was running for office, he said that if you built a new coal fire plant why you go bankrupt. and the head of the epa has also said that the regulations on burning coal are now so stringent it's virtually impossible to build a new coal fire plant. well i don't believe in putting

our coal under the ground forever. i believe we should take advantage of it, put american workers back to work and use a resource that's abundant, cheap and can be burned in a clean way. and by the way i also believe in oil and gas. i believe we should develop our resources. i believe within eight years america, north america rather should be energy independent and that want requires all those source of energy. and that will keep the price at the pump moderated. means good jobs for americans. it's been calculated if we're serious about energy, really take advantage of the energy resources we have, that you're going to create some 3.5 to 4 million jobs. i know right now you're thinking about one job. your job. i'm thinking about your job as well. person by person. every american deserves a good job. people are hard-working right here in this community. i want to make sure your jobs

stay here, grow here and provide a bright future for you and your family. now i also believe in addition to energy that we have an opportunity to create more jobs by selling our goods and services abroad so i want to open up more trade with other nations and china is stealing jobs unfairly i'll crack down on china. number three, number three, i want to make sure that our people have the skills they need to succeed, so we have a lot of government training programs. and that's all fine and well except there are 47 of them. federal government training programs. and they report to eight different government agencies and so the overhead cost of all of this, this burden and bureaucracy is just killing. i want to take the money the federal government is spending on training, bundle it up, send it back to virginia, its fair

share, and let virginia do what's right for the people of virginia with their training dollars. and let me mention as my number four here to get this economy going and to create more good jobs. let me mention something about the deficit. this idea of every year america spending and the federal government a trillion dollars more than we take in is bad for our economy and bad for the next generation. it's immore for us to keep spending than we take in. oil cap federal spending and get us on track to a balanced budget. >> all right. we're going to leave that speech here. and we'll wait to see if he make some specific comments about the jobs report. he didn't. we'll show you what's the average is going. dow is going negative. nasdaq and dow and the s&p have lost a little bit of altitude. apple not helping when it comes

to the nasdaq. all right. romney talk being about jobs. we're talking about jobs today. guys, you heard what steve liesman had to say. >> do ible the number? probably not. when you look at the decrease it became something that did make us all scratch our heads. to steve's point i would address this. i drove a cadillac -- when i brought my fwal to the prom as not in a pinto it was an el dorado. this 114,000 job number has to stick out to you. we're looking for 140 to 150,000. 114 is not a great number. >> most guys think that number will be revised. i'm not concerned about the 114, but i'm also not buying the 7.8. that's telling me we're making jobs at 200, 250. i have no problem believing the average in the past six weeks, 145 is where we are right now. >> guys? >> let's say 8%.

call it 8% the rate. to pete's point the market wants to continue to go higher. obviously it sold off a little bit in the looft few minutes. understood. i still adhere to my comments the market doesn't give me this the long sell the highs which do i believe we have to push towards 1500, 1525 in the s&p and names we've hammered home. home depot at 12 1/2 year high. there are secular stories that continue to work and i believe they will continue network. >> what are you doing with this? >> well, listen, you buy this jobs report. it's astounding to me that some people believe that there's a conspiracy theory out there and to me what i know about human nature is when the facts don't fit people's belief thend to make up stories so they are not wrong. what that says to me in this case is there is fuel for a big, big rally here. the one thing that's not priced in to this market is an improving economy. so all you need to do is get a

good couple numbers and we're head back up to that 1500 level. >> dr. j? >> mark twain was quoting other folks from history that said there's lies, damn lies and statistics. i don't think the president manipulated this number. but do i think the labor force participation rate michelle has changed significantly since the president came into office. that's because a lot of folks have stopped completely taking themselves off the table. that's millions of folks otherwise we're at 10.7% unemployment rate. everybody has a little something they can pick at in this report. i think overall we really need to focus on exactly what the candidate were talk about, jobs. it's not about obama care, it's about jobs. i wish the president focused on that from the beginning of his term but now we're going to have a real discussion about it and that's why i applaud it. >> don't move. i one governor romney just said the only reason the unemployment rate is coming down is because people are dropping out of the

workforce. that's a practice phrase. we didn't hear it ourselves. >> i trust you as always as a reporter. you sit there with the tear glass in front of you to get you want right. sitting at the desk there's no doubt in my mind you would get it right. that's not true for this month. what john said is true for over a period of time. we had a decline in the participation. had people stayed in the workforce we would have a higher unemployment rate. this month in particular the participation rate went up and you had people coming in and say count me as a worker here. and available for the labor force. that have not true that month but governor romney is correct over a per of time here you had this accelerated decline in the participation rate. because we have accelerated retirement of the baby boomers and you have discouraged workers, you know what? this job market is so lousy -- >> size of the labor force is pretty low. >> exactly. it's 63.6, i want to say today up from 63.5. don't write mom home about that

increase in participation. you wouldn't necessarily write your mother about participation rate. but if you were -- >> my question -- >> all right thank you very much steve for helping us out with that. ahead on halftime, it's one for the bulls. goldman sachs is raising its target for the s&p 500 for the end of next year. but wait until you see what they think happens at the end of this year. details on our call of the day. tale 2005 stocks, hewlett-packard warns, facebook gets 1 billion users. we'll give you the contrarian trades on those stocks. we'll be right back.

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. super bear. bullish next year. goldman sachs showing a 1575 s&p for 2013. first they think we'll see a 15% pull back before the end the year because the fiscal cliff

uncertainty. are they right on both calls? guy, what do you think? >> that's fascinating. we used to trade something in options called knock ins and knock outs np is what that's setting up for. >> is this about women? >> don't know how to take that. this is a family show. i don't know where you're going with that. i lost my train of thought. >> knock ins, knock outs. >> the first move is up to 1525 and we'll talk after that. i'll be hard pressed to believe they can be right on both these calls. pretty amazing move to see us come off 150 or so s&p. >> 200 points. morgan stanley is worse. they think it goes to 1175. >> we had him on a number of times. he's steadfast in that belief. i'm in the camp put one foot in front of the other and foot i'm putting in front of the other is 1525 then we'll talk. >> for the end of next year. >> this year. next year?

listen 2012, the mayans. >> dr. j., is fiscal cliff have so much uncertainty we'll have a major selloff? >> no. our politicians overseas is their willingness to kick the can will not stop. in other words this will move. that deadline is not a hard and fast deadline. they will find a way, michelle, trust me, you've been over there enough time as liesman said with tear gas in your eyes listening, seeing, watching exactly how these guys maneuver and it end up the same way they kick the can further down the road. >> pete, what dunk? b.k.? >> it goes back to this bearish sentiment that's out there that on a known event we know about the fiscal cliff, we've known about it for a year. ? >> we don't know the outcome.

>> there's two out comes, really bad or not so bad. it's simple. it will get a little bit better which the market will rip on or we go over the cliff and you sell everything. if we get any movement away from the cliff it will be good for the market. as long as we hold 1425 we're going above 1500. >> john taylor was on "squawk box" this morning and talking about you got to trade the markets you got. i agree with him. that's the mantra we've lived by. trade what's in front of you. we're looking at a volatility index that's near the absolute loss. underneath 14. we're seeing evaluation plays that are working and continue network. i believe in potentially that 1500 level guy is talk about. we'll have some dips and rises. the overall trend continues to be to the upside. now these guys with money in bonds that money has got to go

somewhere. a lot of money came out of the equity markets. some of that money we see come back into the equity markets. that's the next leg to push us to the upside. we hit 1500 by 2013, forget about it, 1650. >> let's talk about 2013. bring that back up. look at these numbers. you believe any of these when it comes to 2013? can we have that graphic again? ah-ha. 1615 says citi group. 1600 says bank of america. 1575 says goldman sachs. >> i can't -- i'm not a forecaster. but what i'll trade are the technicals and the fundamentals and right now the technicals tell me that the next stop is at 1500, 1525 level that we've seen. i don't know what it was. within the last few years. that's where we're head. from there a conversation. you don't want to get ahead of yourself. trade the markets and we'll go from there. >> you look good in a weather outfit. >> if we did it together with your red glasses.

>> let's give you two stocks of the week. hewlett-packard and facebook. good to see you. how are you >> i'm great. how are you doing? >> good. you're thinking, you actually like hewlett-packard at this point. everybody else is super negative and now you're starting to get interested. tell me why. >> first of all, i think as is the wall street way whenever there's a morsel of information that's reacted to either on the positive or negative side. 3.05 a share, baseline, things don't get better. that's a situation where you have a 21% free cash flow yield, i won't get interested in tech companies when they have a 10% free cash flow yield. i think this is a good opportunity. do they not have problems? yes, they have some secular problems and they have some cyclical problems. i think some of the secular problems are never is going to

be solved. some of the cyclical problems will be solved over time so i think it's attractive from 14. >> jim cramer yesterday said he could see hpq going to way of eastman kodak. is that a possibility here? >> i don't think it is because i know that situation pretty well. the deal with hp they said they had secular issues. print is going down. will continue to go down. no stopping that. however the company will embrace some areas of growth. they just came out with an enterprise tablet. could have some momentum. windows 8 could bring some momentum. turning around the services business. could bring some momentum. i think with kodak, it was essentially a one product company with no growth vehicles in the digital age. hp has problems yes but i do think they will stage enough of a come back and the stock is way too cheap. >> what do you think about facebook. a billion users. >> first of all you had mentioned we own facebook. i don't and the firm doesn't own

it. we're pretty bearish on facebook. the way i look at facebook a lot of users but you have to show me how you monetize mobile. if they can prove that they can monetize mobile at a reasonable profit and cash flow rate then the stock will skyrocket. however if that doesn't happen it's going to go a lot lower and the problem with that is we don't have enough information to make the call either way so i just say stay way from it, there's 9,000 u.s. publicly trade stocks just look at something else. >> paul i agree with you, facebook, that's all in front of us and they have a potential with the 600 million users of the mobile platform for this to be something if they can convert that into the actual mond monetization. what kind of tame frame are we talk about hp. meg whitman said give us some time. we're working our way through this mess. what kind of time frame are you talking about? is hewlett-packard a buy today

or sit back and wait a few more months. maybe half a year or so before you start to get interested and nibble back into hewlett-packard. >> you asked an excellent question. if you were trading oriented you can probably wait because when they announce their next earnings which will be later this month, maybe going into november, i think that there could be some more bad tidings to share particularly a pretty big writeoff of the goodwill for the acquisition that they made in october of 2011. that was a bad piece of news. if you're a long term investor i think 14 is a screaming buy and if i go out a couple of years, if the stock is not up 50% i would be shocked. >> have a great weekend paul. good to see you. >> you. >> all right dr. j., what your going do with hp? buy hp and sell facebook. >> won't do it as a paris trade. what i'll do oil buy some hpq.

i like that stock. karen finerman said you cou see when the next reports come out that a lot of big money did pile in. traded like 140 million shares on wednesday when meg said what she said. that's why i think you'll see a lot of those big institutions got involve on that dip. >> all right. coming up our top three trades, breaking records, time to take profit? we'll get some answers. and what parts of the country are seeing gasoline shortages? also higher prices even though oil is on pace to close lower for the third week in a row. how does that happen? we'll be right back.

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welcome back to the "halftime report". take a look at the chart, apple down 2%. loss of the day for this stock. it's breaking through the 50 day moving average and keeping going lower. also seeing potentially some technical selling here in the name. also want to point out samsung may have better than expected

earns. you may be seeing selling pressure. guys back over to you. >> galaxy doing better than folks expected. pete, what would you do here? >> i still think it's an opportunity. i love apple. i think it's selling off for the wrong reasons. still sticking with 49 million sales as far as the iphone. i respect him. he's been dead right many times now. and he even includes the fact it's a 13 week not a 14 week quarter. but he says one caveat if the supply chain is strained then those numbers have to be readjusted. >> b.k., what do you think? >> i also like apple here but it has to hold 650. not only for apple but i think for the market. this is the leader of the mark important the last couple of years. if you lose the leader you could lose the market. i think the market in general cube lot higher if apple wasn't down 2%. >> you think if it goes below 650 we have a wider spread

selloff because it dents confidence of everybody. >> everybody owns apple. it is the leader. you're not going to feel very good about buying other stocks if apple is going down. >> crude oil is on track for its third straight weekly loss. gas prices are surging. in california a gallon of regular shot up by as much as 20 cents overnight. spike is being blamed on supply shortage caused by issues at u.s. refineries. how long will this last? there are gasoline stations shut down in california. what's going on? >> we had a four year low on inventories, and we've been strange the system. all of that, you know, makes us very vulnerable. so you had the baytown fire that was not a big event but enough of an event to shut things down for a while constraining supplies. we're on a knife edge but seasonally we're coming out of the driving season sponsorship it shouldn't last too long.

>> in california mostly but throughout the united states if >> it is. four year low across the board but california is the most vulnerable. >> you had say you don't think it will last long how long >> two to four weeks. >> what do you make of the selloff in crude. i think of romney doing well in debate. right. talk about regime change in iran potentially because of the protests. >> that's the big one. >> that's the big one. elections in venezuela this weekend which may be -- >> that could be next week's -- >> next week's big one. three situation wrgs you could see a lot more supply coming on the market no, >> on the crude side we're amply supplied and we're there right now and probably gets bigger next year. there's a lot more coming out of iraq. so, we've had a big insecurity premium in the price of oil for most of this contemporary. $15 to $20. that gets eroded over the next three to four months. >> crude at 89 bucks in

november. >> we test into the 80s, low 80s and 70s before it's over. >> how long will that take? >> within the next three to six months. >> wow. >> the problem is, and i don't disagree necessarily, again i don't think it means gasoline prices will go lower as we just discussed. the trade has been, pete's talked about it, we mentioned it a few times, refiners work, vol volaris is having a nice day. psx. i hate to say it crude is not the problem. we have enough crude out there. it's refiner capacity which is why i think these refiner trades and gasoline will move higher. >> dr. j. >> like guy said. this is a stock that both of us have been on. psx, phillips 66, it's the distribution side of this business and they are hitting on all cylinders. call buying in the last several days. in the energy sector look at

williams, wmb, we see speculation all over this space, murphy getting in there. i think this is space you want to buy in dips. throw in one more name. >> marathon petroleum. phillips don't hit daily. almost every day we start to see this new trend of people coming for the refiners. some visited as well. i think this marathon petroleum is another name to keep an eye on. >> if what you say is true, all these names they are talking about, do you see consolidation. >> consolidation is coming more in the upstream than the integrated side. their calls are making a lot of sense. but we are lookings at abundant capital. we're looking at good liquidity situation. pent up demand. we've seen very little corporate conso lietation in the last six years. before that we're at about a third of the pace that we saw from those prior periods. it's going to pick up i think in

2013 and '14. >> tom good to see you. thanks for coming in. >> coming up restoring investor confidence. we'll talk to they'd of a high-speed firm guy in charge of a firm that has dark pools on what's in place to prevent slash crashes. and spain's finance minister to laughing matter. what he's saying now about his country's financial situation. more halftime up next. ♪ [ piano] you. we know you. we know you're not always on top of it. and how could you be? that often you just want... quiet. we know all that life demands from you. and how it's almost impossible for you to escape. almost. introducing a car made better for you in every way. the luxurious, all-new honda accord. it starts with you.

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trades by an indian broker sending the indian stock market tumbling briefly. flash crash forcing officials to halt trading. latest example how human error and fast trading computers have destabilized markets on cage. you're not a high frequency trader, do you have a dark pool, correct? >> yeah. it's essentially a wholesale marketplace for 700 plus of the largest asset managers around the world to be able to trade between themselves. we've created a safe zone and hft free trading stone for the institution. >> up don't like high frequency trading. >> no. the most important thing and there's really nothing else that

matters about the stock market or investing if there's no investor confidence left in the world. and unfortunately that is the ripple effect that's the high frequency traders are having across the world. especially now the latest is the indian flash crash. >> i know you're a noun and they are a verb to me in the end it's not the same as an individual investor. you have a pool of people that get to see a pool of prices before everybody else does, right? which to me is in effect the same thing. there's groups of people out there, high frequency traders, also getting an early peek. like front running regardless. >> no, not at all. in fact, you know, institutions, if you're trading a million dollars worth of stock or $10 million worth of stock you need different tools than if you're a retail trader. the institutionally managed assets have grown 40 times in the last 30 years and who invests in them? 100 million american people invest their hard earned savings in pension plans and mutual funds.

so, you know, anything that takes advantage of institutional trading and moves the stock price up is in effect a huge tax on all of the hard-working people that invest their hard earned savings with those institutions to manage. >> explain to me why we shouldn't be able to see all bids and offers all in the same place at the same time. >> for the same reason that high frequency traders can take advantage of the institutional orders. the institutions have orders that are so large every time they go into the market and they move the market. if they want to beltway million shares of something and the market on the exchange is 250 shares to sell, anybody that's taken economics, million shares of demand going against 250 shares of supply you'll move the market. who in their right mind and it would be fiscally responsible for somebody to put million shares of demand for everybody to see. high frequency traders don't see it but they have computers who sense the imbalance and direct their trading at these order and move the market against the

institution and just an example of very few people making a lot of money at the expense of very many. >> dr. j.? >> i agree with seth. i don't have near the problem with the dark pool, michelle that i have with high frequency trading. the issue here is not speed of trade because automation and speed of trade have reduced costs and friction in the markets but it's the high frequency guys stepping ahead, trading in fractions of a penny ahead of order flow that you're addressing michelle and i think that seth would have a big problem with as well. >> the big problem here is really about restoring investor confidence. >> yep. >> the underlying thread that links all the major, you know, massive disasters that we've seen, whether facebook or the indian flash crash, our flash crash, all of these firms are trying to build their systems to shave i'll millisecond off the timing. if everything went great then that would be fine.

the problem is that these are just massive, you know, public disasters and it's driving investors out of the market. >> seth, oil tee one up for you. what are the solutions because i you know have some ideas for this. >> we've created a safe zone for the institutions, what the regulators have to do is provide a safe zone for the retail investors as well. you have to get away from investors thinking it's a casino it's rigged and go back to an investors market where people are taking a stand. >> how do you make a safe zone for smaller investors? >> you have to flip the market. what we've done is basically institute the same kind of structure that other industries have and have a wholesale market and the wholesale market should feed the retail market. what we need is massive debt ba -- depth back into the market. that's where the manipulation can happen easily and quickly. if you have a wholesale market that has hundreds of thousands of shares that are in depth,

then, of course, you can supply or actually handle the thousand shares that have to be executed again it. no market movement much >> thank you so much. i'm skeptical of anything that calls for more regulators getting involved and punishing people who have been innovative. you've been innovative. we'll review the tweets making the halftime cut but what spain's prime minister is saying now about needing a bailout which are causing information laugh at him. yes, we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] the 2013 smart comes with 8 airbags, a crash management system and the world's only tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons. small in size. big on safety.

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what? [ male announcer ] the endlessly customizable 2013 smart. michelle, folks today on "power lunch" top of the hour 114,000 jobs added last month, unemployment nipping below 8% first time since '09. some on the gop side question the numbers. we have a congressman from florida says something doesn't smell right to him. we'll see if he has any reason behind his allegation. there's a fight over a jobs on another front. some republicans say the white house is bending labor laws for votes. senator john mccain is with us

live. we'll talk about that and more with the last time presidential candidate on the gop side and the age old debate wall street bankers are they overpaid and are more cuts ahead. we got that and more top of the hour, jobs. >> sounds great. not often a finance minister is laughed at when tlifrg a speech but that's exactly what happened to spain's finance minister when he told a crowd in london that his country doesn't need a bailout. he was speaking to students at london school of economics and they chuckled at that. nevertheless the euro moving above 1.35 versus u.s. dollar. boris, good to see you. what do you make of the situation with the euro, with merkel going to greece next week, walking in to the lion's den. messy day. >> yes. but i think ultimately what you have to take away from this week is when draghi came out and said

don't mess with me. basically there's a coalescing of ideas in the eurozone now around the ont and esm where most of the european key leaders are in agreement on this system. so what you're seeing, the reason you're seeing so much confidence in the euro is they pretty much stop gapd the sovereign debt crisis for the time being. even bill gross wants to by short term italian debt. at this point you don't fight the ecb. euro has stabilized. greece is a problem. yes spain is still a problem. those will be negotiated in the next couple of weebs and will temper. >> hat are your levels on the euro? >> the euro at this point is pretty much at the top of its range. i don't want to trade it. what i do want to trade is dollar/yen. i like it a lot. employment report today was a "game change"er as far as dollar/yen goes. it's been one of the toughest

currency trades. broken so many hearts of currency laws. but it's breaking out from its bottom. i want to be a buyer of dollar/yen on the assumption the u.s. economy is starting to starting to move up. now in honor of the end of the baseball season, it seems to be the straw that stirs the drink in honor of reggie jackson. i think if we continue momentum to the up side, dollar/yen has a chance to go to 80 which is a very key level. if you clear that, you have a move all the way up to 83. to me a buy at 79 with a stop at 77.50, first target of 80, then possibly 83 is an interesting trade off of today's nfp numbers. >> catch more currency trades today and every friday, 5:30 p.m. on cnbc's "money in motion." still to come -- your tweets. cnbc's seema mody has them. >> you got a question on stocks, currencies, xhomd ticommodities. that's next on the halftime report. [ male announcer ] for the dreamers...

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welcome back to "fast money halftime report." breaking news on cantor fitzgerald. a moody's downgrade by two notches to be a 1 from baa3. canter is apparently not happy with that move. he says the move to cut canter's credit resulted in the firm

asking moody's to stop rating them all together noting that the firm disagrees with moody's take on the impact of certain compensation charges. in the memo canter says it maintains a rating relationship with standard and poor's, and fitch, both of which have affirmed their credit rating with canter in the last six months. we should note that the firm's subsidiary bdc noted in a regulatory filing that it had stopped working with moody's. but nonetheless an interesting take on a credit downgrade at one of the street's biggest bond trading firms. >> you got questions? our traders have answers. seema mody joins us with your tweets. >> earnings are on tap next week with alcoa reporting on tuesday. with all the talk and concern around china's gdp slowing down, is the bar set so low on yum brands that it could actually surprise with a beat. india and china have been a big

catalyst for yum in the past. what about this quarter? >> i actually think the bar is pretty low here and they could beat. we know china's been slowing down. you never get hit by the bus that you can see. i think yum's probably a buy. >> it seems like wells fargo's having a tough time breaking $36, although it actually just did. nonetheless, they are the financial sector slackers when you compare its run we're seeing in bank of america, goldman sachs, morgan stanley over the past three months. is this the stock to outperform? >> i'm not sure that it is. think you still look at the high beta stocks, citi, bank of america. that's where there's massive option activity, including today in bank of america, it was 3-1 calls to puts in the first half our hour. over 100,000 calls against 30,000 puts. that continues to be the trend. >> thanks for bringing us the tweets, seema. coming up on "power lunch," is the obama administration helping corporate america break a key labor law to help win next

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i got a lot of things going on over here. final trade. brian kelly, put down the whopper, the chocolate shake, the onion rings, the french fries. what's your final trade? >> wow. that's going to be a rolaids moment right there. as i said at the top of the show, one thing that's not priced in any market is an improving economy. the way you want to play an improving economy is through the base metals. it also benefits from qe and from some of the strife, unrest in